>the masses are dumber than they’ve ever been.

I don't believe that for a second, but what I do believe is that 'the masses' have never been so re-broadcast, nor had such a large loud-speaker.

Go spend time in the comment section of basically anywhere online. I promise you’ll change your mind.

That’s proof that people are dumb, not that they didn’t used to be even dumber.

It's more likely to be proof that dumb people have more time and inclination to spew their comments online.

And with that bit of self-realization, I think it's time to sign off for a bit.

Being self-aware is the best defense against becoming a self-awarewolf[0].

[0]: https://old.reddit.com/r/SelfAwarewolves/

This is a side effect of the internet becoming more accessible to everyone.

Keep in mind that the number of children on the internet is higher than it has ever been, and children typically also have more free time to comment than adults have.

And realize that if you were born just a few centuries earlier, you would have probably been illiterate - and if you were literate, you probably couldn't read anything beyond religious texts.

But on the other hand, you wouldn't have been able to broadcast the holes in your knowledge as far, either. And everyone has them - the holes in their knowledge. One of yours seems to be reading communication. If most folks can barely speak coherently - to you - I'd wager that you just aren't putting in the work to better understand colloquial speech.

The cultural context of colloquial speech is incredibly difficult to pick up online. It is literally never communicated, you have to scrape Culture Shock and reaction videos for weeks to piece it together. Or study full time, or live there.

I don't generally agree with the masses being dumber than ever, but I do think people have a pretty warped view of nature these days. We heavily censor real violence; its partially why people (in US at least) have such a high tolerance for "violent" shows -- they are so far detached from real violence it doesn't even register as something actually bad.

I have mixed feelings. Being exposed to actual violence doesn't seem to make people better, IME. But being so detached from it doesn't seem healthy either.

I'm not certain that "dumber than they’ve ever been" is true. The "Flynn Effect" seems well substantiated:

Test score increases have been continuous and approximately linear from the earliest years of testing to the present. For example, a study published in the year 2009 found that British children's average scores on the Raven's Progressive Matrices test rose by 14 IQ points from 1942 to 2008.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect

Improvements in environmental factors, that probably had driven the Flynn effect, have topped out. And now the effect seems to be reversed (at least in developed countries).

Ok cool now do this same measurement of test scores since 2020. It’s also well known that this hypothesis has not been holding up well in the last 30 years.

Is that documented somewhere that you can share? If it’s well known then there must be a ton of articles and papers about such phenomena.

The data is there in the wikipedia page linked earlier on the Flynn effect under "Possible end of progression".

i mean just google it, the pause in flynn is a very well known effect in the developed world

Do you habe any data to back up your claims? If not you are spreading misinformation yourself.

The data is there in the wikipedia page linked earlier on the Flynn effect under "Possible end of progression".

So was 2020 the peak of intelligent commentary on the internet? I seem to recall that the quality of discourse was much higher around the year 2000, even though average IQ was higher in 2020.

I think this is a red herring. It used to be harder to access the internet, and it selected for a certain type of person. Today, in the era of the smart phone, virtually everyone in wealthy nations is on the internet. Most notably, that includes vast numbers of children.

I bet if you looked poorer countries where few people have internet-connected devices, the quality of discourse is much higher. In particular, there are likely few children participating (and the ones who do likely have unusually proactive and involved parents).

The red herring is a fair point. I have had to moderate comment sections off and on over the years and there are times when the magnitude of stupidity overwhelms you, so I was venting a bit.

"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - Kay, Men In Black

I think this paraphrases Nietzsche:

Madness is something rare in individuals — but in groups, parties, peoples, and ages, it is the rule.